Keynote Speakers
Clare Chambers
Clare Chambers is University Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and a Fellow of Jesus College, University of Cambridge. Her field is contemporary political philosophy. Her main interests are: contemporary feminist theory, including marriage and personal relationships, the body, beauty and appearance, and liberal and radical feminism; contemporary liberal theory, including equality, autonomy, multiculturalism, and Rawlsian theory; and theories of social construction, including feminist and post-structural work. She is the author of Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State (Oxford University Press, 2017); Sex, Culture, and Justice: The Limits of Choice (Penn State University Press, 2008); Teach Yourself Political Philosophy: A Complete Introduction (with Phil Parvin, Hodder, 2012); and numerous articles and chapters on political philosophy. Her work is regularly featured outside academia, and she engages in impact work. |
Tom Shakespeare
Tom Shakespeare is professor of disability research at the International Centre for Evidence in Disability (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine), and author of books including Disability Rights and Wrongs (2006) and The Sexual Politics of Disability (1996) and Genetic Politics: eugenics to genome (2003). Trained in sociology, he has also supervised clinical psychology doctorates at Norwich Medical School, and works closely with Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust on a research programme exploring the process of diagnosis as well as the co-production of diagnostic guidelines. He was formerly part of the team at the World Health Organisation that produced the World Report on Disability (2011). Prior to that, he helped set up the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Institute at Newcastle University, and co-founded the Café Scientifique movement in UK and across the world. Currently a member of Nuffield Council on Bioethics, he has also been a member of Arts Council England (2003-2008). He broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio 4. |
Amrita Pande
Amrita Pande is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cape Town. Her research primarily focuses on globalisation, reproductive labour and new reproductive technologies. Her most recent book publication is a monograph based on the multi-billion dollar industry of paid pregnancy, Wombs in Labor: Transnational Commercial Surrogacy in India (Columbia University Press, 2014). Related publications have appeared in international peer-reviewed journals like Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Gender and Society, Critical Social Policy, International Migration Review, Qualitative Sociology, Feminist Studies, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Anthropologica, PhiloSOPHIA, Reproductive BioMedicine and in numerous edited volumes and newspapers. Amrita is currently leading a research project Rand and the Reproductive Body: Markets for Reproduction in South Africa, mapping the "global fertility flows" (of eggs, sperms, travelling gamete donors and surrogates) that connect countries in the global south. She is also an educator-performer involved in community and interactive theatre connecting the creative arts to social inquiry. She is currently involved in a multi-media theatre production, Made in India: Notes from a Baby Farm based on her recent book on surrogacy (click the button left to visit the website). |
Heather Widdows
Heather Widdows is the John Ferguson Professor of Global Ethics in the Department of Philosophy and Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor Research (Impact) at the University of Birmingham. Her books include Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal (Princeton University Press, 2018), Global Ethics: An Introduction (Acumen, 2011), The Connected Self: The Ethics and Governance of the Genetic Individual (CUP, 2013), and The Moral Vision of Iris Murdoch (Ashgate, 2005). Heather is particularly committed to public engagement and work with policy makers. As such she has served as a member of the UK Biobank Ethics and Governance Council (2007-2013), the Philosophy REF-panel (2013-2014) and she is currently a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. |